Trent Reznor is a musician, producer, composer, recording artist, and business conglomerate rolled into a rather unassuming and compact frame. He is the founder and the creative force behind the industrial-rock/electro-metal band Nine Inch Nails, the most commercially successful, and arguably the most artistically important rock band to have called Cleveland home. Time magazine called Reznor "the most influential musician of the '90s." Reznor, in conjunction with manager John Malm, has also been a pioneer in the area of artistic control, seeing art work, imaging, marketing, and merchandising, along with the music, as part of the creative whole.

Michael Trent Reznor, born May 17, 1965, is a highly conflicted figure, a seeming changeling in a blur of images: bold leather hero, mud-smeared Dionysiac, grim masochist, hollow-eyed nihilist. In person, the profoundly normal-looking Reznor is typically thoughtful, affable and articulate, when not brooding and/or aggrieved.

Reznor trained in classical piano from the age of five, his prodigious talents encouraged by the grandparents who raised him in the rural Western Pennsylvania town of Mercer after his parents divorced. Not large or openly aggressive and drawn to music and technology, Reznor was well-outside Mercer's inner circle of football players and prom queens. However, the small, musical lad was also drawn to the vicarious violence of comic books and movies, the beginnings of revenge fantasies at the heart of some of his darkest music. At about the age of 13, Reznor realized he could express how he felt "through a musical instrument," a fundamental relief and challenge.

After high school, Reznor majored in computer engineering at Allegheny College for a year before he moved to the big city of Cleveland, Ohio. Reznor sold synths at Pi Keyboards, then worked as a janitor and programmer at the Right Stuff recording studio. Meanwhile, he played with several bands including the Urge, the Innocent, Lucky Pierre, Exotic Birds, and Slam Bam Boo, but it wasn't until he went solo and developed his own material that his talent blossomed.

Reznor revealed this process in a 1991 interview: "I had tried to write songs on and off, but I never seemed to be able to get it together. It didn't feel right. I had kept a journal of my most private and personal feelings, and I had no intention of ever showing it to anyone else, let alone publishing it. In a sickening flash one night, I realized I had to write songs from my journal. I felt naked and embarrassed, but I knew it was real, and that is what my songs were missing: emotional reality."

"Nine Inch Nails" (which has no particular meaning other than it sounded threatening and was easy to abbreviate) was comprised of one member, Trent Reznor (with editing help from roommate Chris Vrenna), on the brilliant 1989 debut, Pretty Hate Machine, released on TVT Records. Pretty Hate Machine, though technically crude by today's standards, is still Reznor's most satisfying work. The alternately ominous and bouncy synths, samples, drum loops and guitars convey a very real brew of self-hatred, unrequited love, defiance, spiritual despair, and an almost-innocent idealism.

The industrial dance anthem "Head Like A Hole" is heavily electronic, with insinuating vocals, primitive drum loops and an urgent synth line in the verse, yielding to pummeling guitar and wrenching vocals in the chorus. "Down In It" is a funky hip-hop synth number that balances the chill of "Head." "Something I Can Never Have" has elegantly orchestrated keyboards, and weaves natural and unnatural sounds around Reznor's half-sung, half-spoken vocal, which reveals painful vulnerability and bittersweet insight.

It would be almost four years before Reznor/NIN released 1992's Broken EP. The delay was due in part to Reznor's infamous battle with TVT over artistic control and accounting practices, among other things. Bailed out financially by Interscope label owner Jimmy Iovine, Reznor was set up with his own label, Nothing Records, and given complete autonomy. In the meantime, Reznor put a live band together, including Bay Village guitarist Rich Patrick (later of Filter), which took the first Lollapalooza tour in the summer '91 by storm, including a near-riot at Blossom Music Center. Reznor also left Cleveland and moved to New Orleans.

Broken, a contract-settler between TVT and Nothing, is a seething aural assault, at times unfathomable and nearly unlistenable, which, ironically, won a Grammy. Reznor, clearly angry and resentful on "Happiness Is Slavery," lets loose with an arsenal of caustic beats, raging metal guitars, and distorted, hysterical vocals. "Gave Up" is a little tamer, with an insistent but not punishing beat, but still riding on pessimistic waves of disgust. The highlight is "Wish," where the rushing pace and wall of guitars can't hide a real melody.

Reznor, free at last, wore his artistic freedom on his sleeve while creating the concept album, '94's The Downward Spiral, on which he continued to explore the deepest, darkest corners of his soul while expanding his sonic horizons exponentially. Fittingly, Reznor worked on much of Spiral in LA in a rented home: the very home in which Sharon Tate and four others were murdered by the Manson Family in 1969, though Reznor claims the choice was accidental.

Reznor explained the process behind the album to Alan Di PernaI in Guitar World, "I wanted it to be a departure from Broken [which was] a real hard-sounding record that was just one big blast of anger…On this record, I was more concerned with mood, texture, restraint and subtlety, rather than getting punched in the face 400 times...The big overview was of somebody who systematically throws away every aspect of his life and what's around him - from personal relationships to religion. This person is giving up to a certain degree, but also finding some peace by getting rid of things that were bogging him down."

Downward's disparate songs range from the murky and sparse "Piggy," to the aggressive, stalking percussion of "March Of The Pigs," with grinding guitar noise broken by a lilting piano interlude where Reznor asks, "Doesn't it make you feel better?" The carnal, pulsing single "Closer" shows Reznor has a little disco left in him that sets his animal urges to boogieing. Downward also demonstrates Reznor's instrumental mastery on the poignant "A Warm Place," oddly cradled between the metallic sarcasm of "Big Man With A Gun" and the halting noise experiment "Eraser." "A Warm Place" seems simultaneously otherwordly and innerworldly as the solitary heart of an unborn throbs in its fluid home - where all is still well and innocent.

'94 was a huge year for Reznor - besides the success of the double-platinum The Downward Spiral, which debuted at #2 in Billboard, NIN also created the indelible audio and visual image of Woodstock '94, as they fought a pitched battle against Mother Nature: she, armed with mud, rain, and howling winds; they, armed with fierce determination and raging music. Neither surrendered, call it a draw.

In the five years between Spiral and The Fragile, Reznor did soundtrack work (see below), built a recording studio in a former mortuary (a recurring theme?) in New Orleans, and worked innumerable hours on The Fragile, an interesting, very good, but not great work. Reznor's perfectionism yields mixed fruit as the sound of the album is almost infinitely deep and possessed of a pellucid clarity even on the rockers; but there is also a disconcerting sense of déjà vu, as Reznor's main theme of alienation is recapitulated from Spiral without Spiral's freshness. In addition, for the first time, there are no great songs on a NIN album, possibly the result of overwork and fussiness. The best songs often seem to spring more-or-less whole - as if an inevitable gift to the writer, who may feel more like a conduit than a creator - whereas the songs here feel more sculpted than received. Advice to Trent: the song is king.

As producer, Reznor has taken the lead role on all Nine Inch Nails releases: Pretty Hate Machine (with the help of, John Fryer, Adrian Sherwood, Flood, Keith LeBlanc), the Broken EP (with Flood), The Downward Spiral (with Flood), and The Fragile (with Alan Moulder). For his Nothing label, Reznor has co-produced shock-rock band Marilyn Manson's Portrait Of An American Family, Smells Like Children, and Antichrist Superstar with the hit single "The Beautiful People." In addition, Reznor has produced and compiled successful and eclectic soundtracks for Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers, and David Lynch's Lost Highway.